Family Migration Patterns

While single men probably made up the largest category of pre-WW2 Lithuanian-born immigrants to Australia, I continue to be surprised on this journey of discovery to find so many family groups making the voyage to the other side of the world. Some of these arrived as married couples, others singly with the intention of meeting their partners here, but many also arrived with already established families including children and occasionally siblings.

•  In contrast to modern-day migration patterns, grandparents and older relatives seem to have been conspicuously absent, as were independent single females.   

The following examples may help illustrate the diversity of these family migration patterns.

Couples

Stasys and Elžbieta Urniežius (Stanislaus and Elizabeth Urniarz) reached Australia in 1904 from the Russian Far East. Stasys served in the AIF during WW1 (Egypt and France) and the couple returned to Lithuania in 1920.

Antanas and Ona Bauže (Anthony and Anna Bauze) arrived in September 1930 and Ona gave birth to their first child in November 1930. The family settled in Sydney and were prominent in Lithuanian community activities.

Ksaveras (Alexander) Skierys arrived in 1911 and his fiancee Ellen Petraitis followed him from Manchester in 1913. They were married in 1916 and raised 3 children in Sydney.

Pranas Šeškas (Frank Seskas) arrived in 1912, was back in Lithuania for a while in the 1920s, and was joined in Australia in 1928 by his prospective wife Natalija. They married here and raised a large family in Western Australia.

Alexander and Ellen Skierys with two children c1920. Courtesy of Rosemary Mitchell.

Couples with children

Jonas and Morta Mickevičius (John and Martha McCowage) arrived in Sydney in 1887. They had two children who had been born in England before departure and went on to have another three in Sydney.

Mamertas and Ona Marcinkevičius (Mamert and Anna Marcin) arrived in 1928 from Lithuania with three children and also settled in Sydney.

1928 passenger list with the Marcinkevičius family.

Single parents

Josephine Ruckman (Jusefa Rukman, born in 1863 in Kaunas, widow) arrived with her two sons John and Felix and daughter-in-law Klara in 1923 and settled in northern Queensland.

Juozas Ruzgas (Joe Ross), born in 1890, arrived in from Lithuania in 1930 and was joined in 1938 by his son Balys Ruzgas (William Ross). After a few years in Victoria the father and son settled in Tasmania.


Siblings and extended families

Kazys Astrauskas (Charles Ashe) arrived in  Western Australia in 1928, followed by his wife, children and his sister-in-law in 1930.

Brothers Petras and Vincas Kairaitis (Peter and Bill Kairaitis) had arrived from Scotland around 1911 and settled at Blacktown (Sydney). They were joined in 1928 by their neice Nelly and her husband George Peters and two nephews Bronius and Antanas Petraitis (Bronius and Anthony Patrick) as well as Bronius' wife and children (all came from Scotland and settled at Blacktown).

Sydney Lithuanians, 1914

This photo (courtesy of Metraštis No. 1, p14) is captioned 'a group of early Lithuanians on a picnic':

The same photo was reproduced in Luda Popenhagen's Australian Lithuanians and titled 'Lithuanian Australians picknicking in Sydney c. 1914, holding Lietuva, the American Lithuanian newspaper which published articles about Lithuanian migrants in Australia'.

We know that John Wedrien (Jonas Vedrinaitis) and Alexander (Ksaveras) Skierys had written an article to Lietuva, which was published on 16 April 1915; see the posts of 5 March and 12 March 2015 for their stories, and that of 14 June 2019 for more about the article they wrote.

I'm confident the man on the far left of the photo is John Wedrien and that the man sitting in the front row (looking down) is Alexander Skierys.

It would be great to identify the ladies and the other two men in this photo.

Perhaps one of the other men was Jonas Mickevičius (known as John McCowage in Sydney)?

Metraštis No 1 (p8) recounts a few elements of Mickevičius' story as told by John Wedrien:

• he arrived in 1887 from the UK with his wife and one child, together with two other Lithuanian men.  The two other men soon returned to London;

• his wife, who according to Vedrinaitis was the first Lithuanian woman to have set foot on Australia, died after 10 years here;

• Jonas had met no other Lithuanians in Australia until a chance encounter with Vedrinaitis at a Sydney market in 1913 or 1914;

• he operated a greengrocer's shop.

Other Lithuanians who were living in Sydney at that time included:

• Jonas Balaika;
• Aleksandras Daukantas;
• Antanas Juknaitis;
• Petras (Peter) Kairaitis and his brother Vincas (Bill) Kairaitis;
• Petras Kazlauskas;
• Pranas Maciunas (Franc Matzonas); and
• Stasys Urniežius (Stanislaus Urniarz)

Lithuanian ANZACS in Egypt and Palestine

The following men from Lithuania served with the First AIF in Egypt and Palestine (their surnames link to Attestation Papers held at the National Archives of Australia):

Franc MATZONAS (?Pranas MACIUNAS) enlisted at Holdsworthy (Sydney) in October 1915 as a single man and embarked for Suez just before Christmas 1915. He was a private in the Camel Corps and the 6th Light Horse Regiment and was killed in action in November 1917 during the battle for Gaza;

• he was born in Riga in 1891. His military service file shows his mother Kazimiera Maciunienė was living in Perm, Russia around 1915 but a few years later she was living in the Pasvalys region of Lithuania (probably the township of Vaškai);   
• Franc was a seaman. Shipping records show an Able Seaman named Matzonas, born in Russia, serving on the German steamship Hoerde from Hamburg arriving in New Orleans in August 1910;
• shipping records also show an Able Seaman named F Matzonas, born in Russia and aged 24, on the Alta from San Francisco arriving in Melbourne on 29 September 1915. This suggests that Franc wasted no time in enlisting once he had reached Australia;   
• he is buried at the Beersheba War Cemetery (around 100km  south of Jerusalem) and is commemorated on panel 10 of the Australian War Memorial's Roll of Honour .

Alfred Joseph MEKENASS/MAKENESS/McKENASS (Alfredas MIKĖNAS) enlisted in March 1916 as a private in the 1st Pioneer Battalion. He embarked for Suez in May 1916 but experienced only a brief period of service, returning to Australia and being discharged in October 1916 as medically unfit:

• he was born in Panevežys in 1892 and arrived in Newcastle NSW in 1912 on a ship from England;
• he worked as a labourer for J & A Brown at Hexham NSW from about 1914, and also lived at Hexham, becoming a naturalised British subject in 1918; 
• Alfred married Linda Coward in 1917 at Morpeth;
• he was killed in a work accident at the Hexham workshops of J & A Brown in December 1925 and was buried at Sandgate cemetery. 

Reuben Laman ROSENFIELD had two periods of service during World War One: first as a Captain and Major with the Australian Medical Corps in Egypt (1916) and then as a Major with the Australian Medical Corps in Britain (1917-18):

• born to a Jewish family in Raseiniai in 1872, the family appear to have moved soon after his birth to the Crimea before arriving in Australia in 1888;
• Reuben studied medicine at the University of Melbourne, subsequently becoming an eye and ear specialist;
• he married Harriet (Hettie) Witkowski in Melbourne in 1899;
• in the Middle East he was attached to No 1 Australian General Hospital and the 2nd Australian Stationary Hospital; his Medical Notes on eye, ear, nose and throat work at No 1 Australian General Hospital, Heliopolis are held by the AWM;  
• in 1933 he changed his surname to Rosefield, and died in Melbourne in 1958 at the age of 85.  

Stanislaus URNIARZ (Stasys Urniežius) also served, in Australian military hospitals; he was a private attached to No 2 Australian General Hospital (1914-16) in Egypt, and in France from 1916:

• he was born in Vilnius in 1874 and was said to have participated in the Russo-Japanese War (Metraštis No 1). However, the Russo-Japanese War started in February 1904 and Stasys arrived in Australia with his wife Elsbiet (Elzbieta?) in April 1904.  He stated that he had come from Port Arthur (Manchuria) which was a Russian military stronghold and blockaded by the Japanese from early 1904. They arrived aboard the British liner Ophir, perhaps having boarded in Colombo or the Middle East, as the vessel served the London-Aden-Australia run at the time;
• he submitted a request for naturalisation in Sydney in 1906, living with his wife at Rozelle, Sydney, and giving his occupation as a tailor.  In 1908 Stasys is listed as a tailor at 370 Harris Street Sydney, and in 1914 at 196 Harris Street;
• at the outbreak of World War One, even though he was already 40 years of age, he enlisted and embarked for Egypt in November 1914. He served with the No 2 Australian General Hospital in Cairo until March 1916 when the hospital was transferred to France;
• rather surprisingly, his military records suggest that his wife Elizabeth joined him in Egypt and Europe. The remittance that was being paid to her in Australia was cancelled in mid 1915 because she was expected to join him in Cairo. Whether she was able to do this by becoming a member of the Australian Army Nursing Service or in some other capacity is not clear at this stage. At any rate, both Stasys and his wife returned to Australia together aboard the Bremen arriving in Sydney in July 1919 (in addition to returning soldiers, the Bremen also transported around 100 soldiers' wives and children);  
• a little over a year later, Mr and Mrs S Urniarz are listed as passengers aboard the Orsova from Brisbane to London departing 6 November 1920. Stasys (and presumably his wife) then moved to Lithuania. His naturalisation file notes that by 1925 he had renounced his British citizenship in order to become a Lithuanian subject.  Apparently he did not return to Vilnius, which at that time was under Polish control.

Other Lithuanian-born members of the AIF (e.g. Anthony Puris and Heyman Wolfson) experienced short periods of service in Egypt before proceeding to France.  Their stories will be told in future posts on those who served on the Western Front.

Sources: NAA; Russian Anzacs; Metrastis No 1; Ancestry.com; Geni.com; Trove.